First came the PencilsMediaMoguls campaign. Then the showrunners of Smallville offered an incentive (a phone call from Michael Rosenbaum), and a challenge to a couple of prominent fandoms. Then came the response from Ron Moore (Aaron Douglas will take one fan to a Canucks hockey game), executive producer of Battlestar Galactica. Now comes the response from Joss Whedon (he’ll call a fan, “late, and probably drunk, and maybe cry”).
Finally, a necessary experiment is up and running, as Kristin Hersh launched CASH Music, “a coalition through which we blur the line that’s traditionally stood between creators of content and the consumers of that content”. Meanwhile (and completely unrelated), listen to The Heroes of the Writers Strike (mp3), with lyrics by Cedric of the Bedlam Bards, C. A. Bridges of Serenity Stuff, and yours truly.
For anyone interested, Ron Moore (executive producer of Battlestar Galactica) stopped by the Fans4Writers Forum for two hours this past Saturday night to answer questions about Razor.
So, yeah. That bank deposit I just made was a whole lot like not making a deposit at all. One might suppose that makes my account a red hole, not a black one.
Granted, the lifting of a character name seems fairly blatant. But for the Red Hot Chili Peppers to sue Showtime alleging that the cable network’s show Californication infringes on the band’s copyright of the term is ludicrous, since it dates at least to the early 1970s — more than twenty years before the band’s album and song of that name.
“Maybe it is not so easy to see if you have always been able to achieve more or less what has been required of you. Maybe you see it best if you know that, all through your life, you will always be on the borderline.”
Just because I need to make sure this is stated for the record, even though I myself can’t actually go to it, let me say something about Mutant Enemy Day (ME Day) on the writers strike picket line. This day is work. It isn’t playtime. It’s to go do the work of supporting the writers. This isn’t about the chance to plump up your autograph book. It isn’t a con. If every person planning to attend goes into it with that mindset, there won’t actually be any picketing going on. Just a mob of fans swarming Mutant Enemy writers and actors for autographs. Go to carry your sign. Go to walk the line. Otherwise, stay the Hell at home.
So, quite clearly, my life is broken. And I broke it. My bank account is overdrawn, I can’t pay my phone bill, my shoes have holes somewhere in the soles which let the rain in from the street, and I continue to work only half-time at a place where I arguably have the hardest job but have the fewest hours and get the least pay. I clean my apartment only to the point where I can go “good enough” even though in reality it isn’t. I’ve had to resign my duties at the just-launched Fans4Writers effort, and will be doing the same for PDX Browncoats, because no one and nothing should depend on me — because I can’t even depend on me. My life is broken. And I broke it. So it’s time to clear the decks of everything else until I can find which pieces of my brain need reconnecting in order to live at least as a reasonable facsimile of an adult human being. Don’t hold your breath.